Chandrayaan-2 Captures Craters On Moon: ISRO Shares Images

Chandrayan 2, India's second lunar exploration mission was successfully launched last month and is currently orbiting the Moon. Earlier this month, the lunar spacecraft beamed back the first set of images of Earth from space. Now, it has captured some image of the surface of the Moon which has been shared by ISRO.

According to ISRO, these set of images were captured by the Terrain Mapping Camera- 2 of Chandrayaan-2 from an altitude of about 4,375 km on August 23. Notably, ISRO shared the first set of Moon's images captured by the spacecraft a day before (August 22).

The new images, on the other hand, show the craters on the lunar surface. Some of them are named after some known astronomers and scientists. The craters captured by the lunar spacecraft are dubbed Jackson, Somerfeld, Kirkwood, Mach, Korolev, Mitra, Plaskett, Hermite, and Rozhdestvensky. For instance, the carter Mitra derives its name from Prof Sisir Kumar Mitra who was a known Indian scientist awarded with Padma Bhushan for his contribution to Radiophysics and ionosphere.

Chandrayaan-2 Highlights:

The Chandrayaan-2 is ISRO's second Moon mission attempt. The new lunar spacecraft was lifted by a heavy lift-rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV-MK 11) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDCC) on July 22.

It is compiled of three different components including the orbiter (weighing 2,379 kg with eight payloads), the lander 'Vikram' (weighing 1,471 kg with four payloads), and rover 'Pragyan' (weighing 27kg with two payloads).

The spacecraft was launched at 2.43PM on July 22 and completed its fourth orbit on August 2 at 3.27 pm. ISRO had previously tweeted the first images of the Earth Captured by the L14 camera on the Chandryaan-2 suggesting its success in the launch as well as its orbit.